On Hiatus
by beautyfrompain
Summary: Ever since the Glass Palace incident, their lives have been on hiatus ... A collection of drabbles and oneshots that center around the Bartimaeus Trilogy. Though it says BxK, all pairings are included. Completed, but still open to suggestions.
1. On Hiatus

**A/N: yes, I have decided to do a collection of Bartimaeus Trilogy oneshots. Yes, this is my first time doing something like this. I haven't read the books in a long while, though, so please tell me if I make any mistakes or if I suck at this. **

******

Sometimes, Kitty Jones couldn't help but wonder.

Was there any way that either of them had survived?

That question haunted her dreams.

She would sometimes reminisce on the old days, when her life was an adventure.

She would feel happier, until she remembered the way the Glass Palace had exploded. Then she would feel age beyond her years.

She would remember the way she had trusted Nathaniel, waited for him to return.

He hadn't.

She had had the faint hope that maybe Bartimaeus had survived, and tried to summon him.

But with no answer.

With every try, the result was the same, and her determination to find proof of their existence dwindled as her doubt grew.

She still had the teeniest spark of hope, but she was too discouraged to act on it.

Her life now seemed bland and adventureless, having faded back to the norm.

But even though she wondered, she had come to accept the truth.

They were gone, and her life was on hiatus.

******

Bartimaeus didn't easily get attached to humans.

They were weak, fragile, spineless, reproduced like rabbits and eventually died. What was the point? There was none.

Even when he had, once, Ptolemy had died, and he had been proved once more that trusting in humans was like going around in circles.

He had vowed to never do so again.

But somehow, he has gotten attached to those two teenagers.

And, now, look where he was; Nathaniel had died, and Kitty would soon have the same fate.

He was sure that Kitty Jones hadn't given up on him. But even if she had done the summonings, she would have no answer.

Because despite the rest from the pull of Earth that he had anticipated, he had been snatched from his vacation almost immediately.

Another delusional visionary, another harebrained scheme, with him to do all the work.

It all got a bit old after a while.

He knew that Kitty would think him dead, but he still felt the inexplainable impulse to tell her that he lived.

He sighed.

Being a djinn wasn't as easy as some might think; he never got a break. Always the slave.

So many privileges, yet so many responsibilities bound him.

He snorted at the irony, that was that such a powerful being would be a slave to such weak race as the human one.

But even if he had nothing to bind him, he would have nothing to go to.

As a slave, his life was now on hiatus.

******


	2. My Hero

**A/N: Hello! Here's the next chapter. Just for clarification, these oneshots have next to nothing to do with one another. Unless I say so of course. **

******

Five years afterwards, Kitty Jones was walking home from another day at work. She was walking down the alley to get to her apartment when she heard footsteps padding against the wet ground behind her, among the pitter-patter of the rain. She turned around, but saw nothing. So she started walking again. It wasn't long before she heard the footsteps again.

This time, when she turned around, she did see someone at the other end of the alley. Two someones, so be exact. They stood there, waiting for her.

She turned around to back out of the alley, only to find another two at the entrance. She felt a shiver go down her spine.

She looked for another way out; there was another alley connecting. She ran to it, but her heart sank when she saw another two men waiting at that end.

The men at the ends of the alley started to advance toward her. She once more tried to find a way out.

"Stay back," she warned in a weak voice, getting into a defensive position. "I know self defense."

One of the men on her right barked out a laugh.

"Oh, come on, baby, don't be like that!" The others laughed along with him.

As the men got closer and closer, foot by foot, Kitty's heart was racing. She couldn't foresee any way out.

_Why did there have to be so many alleys next to her apartment?_

She was just starting to think that she was done for, when she had the teeniest spark of hope. If he were to answer the summons...

But he hadn't for the last four years. Why would he now?

But for the moment, it seemed to be her only hope.

So, she muttered the incantations under her breath. Kitty had repeated them so many times, hoping for an answer, that she now knew them by heart.

As she finished, one of the men grabbed her. She lashed out with her leg, her foot connecting with his pelvis. He hissed and doubled over, letting go in the pain. But soon, another grabbed her from behind. This time, Kitty could not defend herself.

"Come on, sugar," he whispered menacingly in her ear. "We're just gonna have a little fun."

_Come on, Bartimaeus, _she thought desperately, as if he could hear. After another moment, she was enclosed in a tight circle formed by the men. She had almost given up by now. What was taking him so long? If he was going to come, he would have come already.

Right?

"Hold her down," the leader told the rest.

Kitty managed to slap away one of them, but then two others managed to pushed her against the wall. Defeated and weak, she finally closed her eyes.

Maybe it would end quickly...

Then, she heard the sound of strained grunts and bodies thudding against the ground.

Could it be?

She felt the two men who had been holding her down let go of her. Her knees were so weak with relief that she slid down the wall, her knees to her chest. Soon, all sounds of fighting stopped, and all was quiet.

Almost afraid to see who her hero was, she lifted her head just a fraction, to see two bare, dirty, brown-skinned feet.

"Hello, Kitty," she heard the familiar voice say.

She looked up, and saw the face of the Egyptian boy, Bartimaeus's favorite form. She jumped up and gave him a hug. She had never been so happy to see him in her whole life.

The djinni nearly got knocked over by the force of the hug.

"Nice to meet you, too," he grunted with what air he could get. "What happened here?"

Kitty started to cry, numbness fading and hysteria kicking in. Bartimaeus patted her back soothingly.

"Shh," he said, somewhat awkwardly. "Its all okay now."

_My hero..._


	3. Conspiracy

**A/N: Hey, guys! I was working on another chapter, but I'm not quite finished yet. This idea just came to me this morning, and it's somewhat inspired by 's _Restless Spirit. _If you haven't seen it yet, check it out immediately; its genius. I want to say thanks to all my reviewers so far, as well. Thanks for the encouragement! Anyway, here it is! It's short, but it was meant to be that way. Review anyway, please!**

_******_

"Miss Farrar!"

"Jane Farrar, I just want to ask a few questions!"

"Over here, Miss Farrar!"

"Miss Farrar, what are your thoughts on the incident with the Glass Palace?"

Jane Farrar pushed her way out of the heavy throng of reporters to get to the front door of her house. Shaking off a stray questioner, she turned back to the crowd.

"All who are not gone within five minutes shall be escorted off the premises immediately," she told them, her voice cold.

As she crowd dispersed, Farrar entered the house, locking the door behind her.

"Are they gone yet?" A tentative voice asked from upstairs.

"No one has successfully gotten through my security yet, John," she told him, quite irritably. "But I sent them away anyway, of course. They will all be gone within approximately four minutes."

A pale, thin teenage boy with a mop of long, black hair emerged from within the house.

"Exactly how long will I have to be in hiding?" the boy asked her, somewhat exasperated. "I'm quite tired of staying inside all the time; I need to go out and get fresh air every once in a while."

Jane Farrar's chuckle was shiver-inducing.

"Soon enough, John Mandrake. Soon enough."

_******_


	4. Paranoia

**A/N: Yes, yet another idea came to me this morning. I seem to be just _bursting _with ideas. But that's a good thing, right? This will again be short. And has next to nothing to do with last chapter.**

_******_

It was a dark and stormy night outside Kitty's apartment. Thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed often against the night sky, lighting the streets of London up as if it were day again.

Kitty was curled up in her apartment, trying to finish a few chapters in a book she was reading before she went to bed. She looked up from her novel as a flash of lightning once more lit up the sky. Then another flash came right after the other, lighting the streets up eerily.

Kitty's breath was knocked right out of her as a head with mop of black hair was shown a few blocks over before the sky went black again. A head that looked a bit too familiar...

Kitty mentally berated herself for letting herself even think something like that. He was dead, after all. If he hadn't been, he surely would have shown in the past few years since the incident.

She tried to focus back on her book, but was distracted again by the eerie sound of scratching against her window. She tried to ignore it the best she could, but it wasn't helping.

Lightning flashed again, this time showing the dark outline of a person wearing a trench coat, closer now. Kitty watched the same spot as the sky went dark, then lit back up again.

There was no one there.

_No such thing as ghosts ... no such thing as ghosts ... no such thing as ghosts ... no such thing as ghosts ..._

Kitty chanted this to herself, but it didn't seem to register in her mind.

She watched for a bit more, but there were no more signs of the mysterious figure. Then, she tried to read again, but she had to keep reading sentences over and over again to get them into her mind. She frequently watched the window, half afraid of what she might see next.

Finally, Kitty put her book down and sighed, getting into her bed. Might as well try to get to sleep; there would be no more reading done with her paranoia.


	5. When His Mind Wanders

**A/N: This is BxN. I got a request for it, though I wasn't really planning on getting in to that so soon. But oh well. It's a sort of drabble-ish one. Sort of depressing. In this part, Nathaniel's dead, but in a sort of dull spirit form. He often looks back on his life. **

******

Dark eyes taunting.

Lips smirking.

_Nathaniel couldn't help his feelings..._

Tanned Egyptian skin.

Familiar form.

_He had come to quite like the form of Ptolemy that Bartimaeus often took._

Smart remarks.

Inevitable jibes.

_He knew he shouldn't feel this way. It was the unspoken, unquestioned rule: Never fall in love with the demon._

Forced to obey.

Punishment for mistakes.

Carefully drawn out pentacles.

_They said demons could not be trusted, everyone did. Never underestimate their guile, they said._

Fire licking at the remains of the Underwoods' house.

Bartimaeus saving him from the wrath of a Lovelace driven to insanity.

_But he had saved him many times ... didn't that count for something?_

Threatenings of Indefinite confinement in a tin filled with rosemary.

_... Though not as much as he had tried to resist._

_**You've been a good servant...**_

_**Well, um, you've been just dandy too.**_

_They had shared a body. Did he already know?_

Fighting the golem.

The Amulet of Samamrkand.

_What did it really matter?_

Dismissing his servant for the final time ...

_He had long since lost the chance to express and feeling he may or may not have had._

Breaking Gladstone's staff to defeat Nouda ...

_So what was the point of letting his mind wander to the times when he had been alive?_

He was dead.

_His life was on hiatus ..._

_... Forever._


	6. Memories Broken

**A/N: To state the obvious, another idea. In this one, Nathaniel is alive, but his state of memory is pretty much blank.**

******

"Escuse me, sir, are you in need of any help?"

Nathaniel turned toward the woman who had spoken.

"Pardon?"

"You look a bit lost there, is there anything in particular that you happen to be looking for?"

He turned to look back up at the high ceiling. The place was irritatingly familiar, but he couldn't find a memory to match it.

"No," he finally told her. "Nothing you could help me with."

"Okay, but I'll be right here if you need any help." The woman went back to her spot behind the questions desk.

Nathaniel had plenty of questions. Most had to do with his memory. He couldn't seem to remember much of the last ten years. One of the few things he could remember were his name. He often visited places to try to regain his memory. He was sure that he had the answers, but he had no access to them. There where major holes in his memory, snatches of information coming and going frequently. Names and pictures, descriptions, often the vague sense of deja vu. He often visited familiar places, hoping that his memory would return.

After wandering around for a bit, Nathaniel finally left the building. He instead went over to a building site, where work was being down. People often related this place to an incident with a "Glass Palace", a vaguely familar name that only skimmed the surface of the pond of his mind, under which the secrets that he seeked lurked.

Nathaniel walked around for a bit before taking a seat on a bench not too far away. He watched the workers before closing his eyes, leaning his head back toward the clouds.

Suddenly, a torrent of memories washed over him before quickly fading away.

Glass exploding.

Fire.

Chaos.

Demons everywhere.

A wooden staff being broken.

And once again with the mind - teasing deja vu.

What could all these broken memories mean?

He opened his eyes and sighed, eyeing a flock of birds passing by. Maybe one day his memory would fully be restored to him, and all in his growing amout of questions would be finally answered.

******


	7. Sweet Dreams

**_A/N: A stray idea I had about five minutes ago. Really short, I know. It's a good thing I have the Golem's Eye in my possession, or I wouldn't have been able to remember hardly any of it. Really need to reread those books..._**

**_**_**

In her apartment, Kitty tossed and turned in her bed. She was dreaming of that day again...

_"Youre a smart girl. Off you go and leave him to die."_

_"Oh_ hell_,"_

_Then Kitty was running again past Jakob and toward the lumbering golem. Ignoring the pain and numbness in her shoulder, her friend's shouts, and the voices in her head ridiculing her actions, she saw herself leaping upon the bonnet of the limousine, running along it, level with the monster. It's third, intelligent eye was fixed on Mandrake's body, and Kitty jumped upon the golem's back. She reached into the beast's mouth, feeling for the manuscript..._

_Then she was falling toward the ground..._

Her eyes flew open as she was snatched from the reality of the dream, based on what had happened years ago. As her labored breath evened out, she wondered why she always dreamed about that night. What was it about it that continued to haunt her?

She remembered falling onto the young magician's body, the golem's face right above her. She remembered the third eye's intelligence dimming, the monster growing stiff and lifeless as she held the yellow scroll in her left hand. She remembered her walking away after Jakob with her shoulder bleeding, Bartimaeus staring after her.

But it never got to that part. It always ended with her falling...

Why couldn't she just have sweet dreams for once?

**_**_**


	8. Demons Don't Get Breaks

**_A/N: An idea I've been having for days now but never got around to until now. Review, please._**

**_**_**

Ah yes ... the Other Place. The one place where demons can actually take a break. Not that they really get to. More like a place where we wait to be snatched up by some greedy, power-hungry sod...

But best not to dwell on that at the moment.

As I drifted along, enjoying the feeling of unending nothingness that was the Other place (_1)_, I suddenly felt almost ... bored.

This, of couse, was quite unusual for me. Being the horribly overworked djinn that I am, I had always welcomed the break from all of the chaos that I seemed to have a knack for getting into. But for some reason, I now seemed so used to this constant 'adventure' that I was almost impatient to start it up again.

I was rightfully horrified at this.

Just because you're used to constant action doesn't mean that you don't need a break, I told myself. Everyone needs a break now and then. With all the work you get forced into, you of all djinn _deserve _a break. Who knows when you'll get your next one?

I was just starting to believe myself and get used to the calm. Despite all the spirits running around, it was almost ... peaceful ...

And I only had what seemed like a moment (_2) _of this peace before I felt something tugging at my essence. I groaned and submitted to the power. It was only then that I remembered what I had so foolishly forgotten:

Demons don't get breaks.

**_**_**

_(1): _But of course, it was stuffed full of various spirits. It just _felt _like nothing. I felt this to be pretty obvious, but you humans can be so particular sometimes...

_(2): _Of course, that moment could have been anything in between the realm of a millisecond and a millenium. Time was terribly irrelevant in the Other Place; what had seemed like a century could have been a second. Either way, I did not appreciate this new development at all.

**_**_**


End file.
